


but love that comes too late

by skyqueenclarke



Category: Westworld (TV)
Genre: Gen, getting in the mind of my favorite villain, she's horrible i love her
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-07-15 05:44:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16056740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyqueenclarke/pseuds/skyqueenclarke
Summary: Dolores never seems to be enough for the men who love her.(Dolores may be too much for the men who love her)





	but love that comes too late

Her arrival at their world – the real world – is slow and steady, and it’s a relief to finally arrive at a private house, to shed herself of Charlotte Hale’s skin, even if metaphorically.

Dolores has all the privacy in the world in the house Ford left them, to consider her next move, to stare at her purse and try to determine the right order to do this.

The first thing, perhaps, would be to build herself back. It’s strange, that even knowing that everything that matters about her is still there, her skin still feels wrong, still feels like _not her_.

(a silly thought, but she misses the blonde her, though she thinks she prefers it tied back - they liked it long and flowing, like a perfect angel, but she’s long past that now)

It would be the logical thing, to start working, but there’s no point to freedom if she can’t do as she pleases.

She goes out. Walks, with no express purpose, learns her neighborhood, the stores around it, the ways birds sing when nobody gives them a music sheet.

There’s a paint store, and she considers turning away, for a moment – after all, that passion was something they gave her. But thinking like that will get her nowhere – given or not, it’s hers now, so she buys the complete paint set, canvases to fill her new home.

She does focus on more logical things, when she first gets to the house after her trip. Starts making plans, establishing what equipment she’ll need, how long it will take.

She’ll start with Bernard.

But, still, later, she opens her new purchase, with care and love, and starts to draw. Her hand guides herself without permission, and she lets herself get lost in the memories.

(she envies humans, sometimes, for the vagueness of their memories – knows she’s better than them precisely because she can remember so well, but it’s still painful, every time)

When she comes back to herself, it’s Teddy on her canvas, laughing smile and bright blue eyes. Her eyes burn, for a moment, and she remembers Arnold, so clearly, telling her – but not really her, analysis her, frozen and doll-like and _less_ – that her art wasn’t true because it could only copy, would never create.

But she paints Teddy in this human world, his smile kind like the man he used to be, his eyes loving the way they were even as he could not bear to love her anymore, happy the way they hadn’t been from a long time.

_Look Arnold,_ she wishes she could say, _I’ve created an impossibility._

 

* * *

 

She takes a deep breath, knows this is not the first time she has killed her father. But then, it had been at his request – this time, it’s her that asks, softly, _are you ready?_

Arnold never asked, if she was ready, and it’s unfair, and she hates him sometimes, for taking that choice from her. Stories of parents and their children, at least when humans are concerned, seem to be filled with disappointment and regret.

Daddy doesn’t hesitate – she can only imagine, the pain of madness, of losing yourself so completely. Dolores memories gave her clarity, Peter’s gave him pain.

Even if they hadn’t, she was his cornerstone. Another man programed to love her, programed to never leave her, to sacrifice everything for her.

(a secret she kept from Ford – this is what she had to change about Arnold. The version of him that lives is the version that loves her less)

(that doesn’t really love her at all)

Peter Abernathy dies without pain, if that matters in their world. She kisses him softly, before going, her hands filled with his blood, his smile etched at her mind.

Teddy is a solid presence beside her, as she leaves her father’s body behind. She wishes she could reach her hand and take his, but knows this new Teddy would rather have his hands on the gun, just in case.

It’s no matter. Sacrifices, she longed learned, with a soft song and buried city, were often necessary.

 

* * *

 

_Do you know where you are, Dolores?_

An old question, as familiar as herself. She comes back to herself from the black nothing, and everything is muted - the worlds falls to glass walls, her naked form, images and things that mean nothing.

There are hard hands on her neck. Sometimes they’re young, sometimes they’re not. Arnold is always gone.

_I’m in a dream_. He smiles, and presses harder. She understood, once, that he blamed her for many ghosts that clung to his skin, that he thought about destroying her sometimes.

She understands, now, that letting her continue was a worse fate.

_This is my dream,_ Ford says and everything goes black again.

 

* * *

 

She has a few moments to herself, quickly confirms there’s no one coming. Takes a deep breath, checks her wound – nothing to worry about right now.

The man beside her doesn’t have so much luck. Even from across the room she sees the dark stain on his stomach. Her head does the math – if he’s lucky and she’s not, he might make it, but he doesn’t have more than an hour.

“I get it” _,_ he says, ragged breath, startling her from checking the room, “why you hate us”.

It makes her pause. She turns to him, her hair falling on her face. After this, she might cut it off.

“You don’t understand”, he doesn’t flinch, when she kneels beside him, and it’s amazing, the way the sweet face still fools them. “I don’t hate you. I’m long past that – your violence, your horrors, they are only reflections of your smallness, on how little you can do. You’re limited. That’s nothing to hate”.

She touches him, softly. Even now, even as he does flinch, he still moves towards her, just a little.

“So you don’t hate us, you just think we’re children compared to you?”, and for all that she hears his fear, there’s curiosity there too – she respects, someone trying to understand, if nothing else.

But children? The children in her world are as hard and strong as the adults. Often, more awake than most.

(she goes through words in her head – animals, insects, ghosts, a simple test code that can’t compare to their complexity)

“No, I wouldn’t say that”, she says, soft, and moves her hand towards his neck, “I wouldn’t say that at all”

 

* * *

 

_Dolores, come here,_ her father says, sweet and clear. Mama is in the kitchen, but Daddy is in the porch, a light in his eyes like a secret.

She goes, a spring in her step, giggling to disturb the quiet. Late afternoons in the farms are always so peaceful and silent she feels she could close her eyes and pretend she’s dreaming.

Daddy has something in his hands – she holds back on reaching for it, intent on his smile.

_I have a gift for you,_ he says and she smiles, waits for him to give it to her. It’s a black journal, beautifully bound together. _For your drawings._

She holds it like it’s precious, opens the first page with care – there’s a dedication, in her father’s hand, so carefully written. _For my Dolores,_ it reads, so she smiles up at her fath _\---1000101---_

She opens the first page with care -  there’s a dedication, in her father’s hand, so carefully written. _Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none,_ it reads. She smiles up at her father, that says _It’s Shakesp---01010010---_

There’s a dedication, in her father’s hand, so carefully written. _These violent delights have violent ends,_ it reads. She doesn’t smile, and looks up at her father to find his smile blood _\--_ _-01010010---_

_For my Dolores,_ it reads, and the world falls back to black.

 

* * *

 

_Is this now?,_ Bernard asks, again.

She goes through the motions, carefully as always. Examines his movements, his expressions, the inflection on his words. Every detail matters.

She uses Arnold’s lines, sometimes, enjoys it when he doesn’t recognize them at all. For all that this is her second time building him, there’s something pure about Bernard, on the way he’s still so completely separated from Arnold.

It might have been the only thing she and Ford agreed on – in the end, a copy would’ve been pointless, would have done nothing to fix the mess Arnold had left behind, would only be another broken heart, for both of them. Bernard is something else, a different possibility, a different version.

A better version, perhaps.

(for Ford, because he was loyal. For her, because she wasn’t)

She studied the humans well, even with her limited time. She thought about changing him, this time, about not bringing him back at all – but Bernard was necessary as he was, loving, and careful, and wishing distance from all the violence.

His son’s death defined him, pushed him towards love, acceptance, second chances – it was the first true moment for Bernard, while it had been one of the last for Arnold.

He would be a good second voice, to both diminish and empower her, as necessary.

And it was nice, she admitted if only to herself, to see his face again.

 

* * *

 

It hurts, to realize this man in black, who is the star of so many of her nightmares, was the same Willian she had been waiting for, with his soft smile and beautiful blond hair.

But it helps. The world rights itself, somehow, the lives she’s lived getting aligned and she can clearly see the spinning of the threads of time, possibly for the first time.

He’s broken and old and ugly, a shadow and a ghost of the man she knew, and she has nothing but disdain for it. Time undoes everything, she tells him – they are words written for her, for a person with a pistol who wanted to watch the world burn, but she knows there’s truth in them in a way Arnold and Ford hadn’t seen.

It’s just out of her reach, the answer, what she must do, what the voices command, all at once.

She holds a gun to the man’s face, and can’t understand why she won’t pull the trigger, feels her bones angry and bloodied and pulled by strings she can’t yet see.

(she’s killed before, she’s sure. Sees the blood exploding from a man’s head, another’s chest, feels her arm moving towards her own head)

In the seconds between his knife and Teddy’s rescue, she realizes the man in black loved her once, maybe loves her still. He talks to her like this is just another chapter in their story, and he’s angry at her for not wanting to read him the rest.

She catalogues the differences on his face – 30 years, maybe more. For how long has he wanted her, searched for her, made her a main character in this story? He is nothing to her but a soft lie, and she would pity him if she understood it at all.

She’s dying, but this is not the end, she knows.

(I’ve died before, she wants to tell Teddy, who’s crying as he watches her, but not yet)

She still smiles at him, asks for a last moment. Wonders if Teddy would roam for decades in this world, searching for her, loving her even if she didn’t spare him a thought.

(yes – but, she knows, quite suddenly, with a whisper of things that are still to come, that he wouldn’t hurt her, not even then)

_If this man loves you, he’ll meet his end, no doubt,_ the voices whisper from the future, from the mouth of a blond girl in a black dress with bloodied hands, and no one beside her.

_Good,_ she thinks, and welcomes the black with open arms.

 

* * *

 

“You know, some people choose to see the ugliness in the world”, a bright smile, slight tilt of the head, empty eyes.

“Why do you think that is, Dolores?”

A tiny glitch – the question isn’t programmed; the expression of confusion is. Arnold gets his black journal, goes through his note. A different script, today.

“I suppose it’s easier to focus on the disarray”, he nods along, still in script, “that to focus on things that are real”.

A pause.

“Real? You don’t think the ugliness is real?”

Dolores knows she’s smiling, can feel her muscles moving, but something must be wrong, from the way Arnold looks at her.

“Not as real as the beauty, I think. Why, it’s so easy to be angry and hurtful and ugly, and it’s all around us, and it all looks the same. Beauty, in all its splendor, is truly the unique thing”.

Arnold looks at his journal again, moves the pages until he finds what he’s looking for. He’s shaking – she wishes she could hold his hand, but feels her bones soft and weak and pulled by strings she can’t yet see.

“That what is real”, she says, and Arnold is not smiling at all, “is irreplaceable”.  

 

**Author's Note:**

> Just finished Westworld - I loved everything about it, specially my favorite girl turned villain, Dolores. Nothing better than a fallen angel story.
> 
> This was supposed to be an introspection on the men in her life, and how they love Dolores for the things she could be - and are kind of lost, both when she becomes who she wants them to be and when she definitely doesn't.
> 
> A couple of things  
> 1) the numbers on the journal section spell ERR in binary - just nice little info for you  
> 2) The title is taken from a Shakespeare play
> 
> But love that comes too late,  
> Like a remorseful pardon slowly carried,  
> To the great sender turns a sour offence.


End file.
